I don't have time at the moment to work on this, but here's a blurb that just took place in #drupal-support:

<xmt> hi, i installed drupal under linux. the installation guide tells me i have to create a database. but this does not work:
<xmt> mysqladmin -u dba_user -p create drupal
<xmt> Enter password:
<xmt> mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
<xmt> error: 'Access denied for user 'dba_user'@'localhost' (using password: YES)'
<xmt> i think there is no user dba_user in mysql
<xmt> do i have to create a drupal db user? how?

A note should probably be added that "dba_user" should be replaced with whatever their mysql username is (or root, if none have been defined yet).

<xmt> next difficulty is this:
<xmt> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.*
<xmt> TO nobody@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
<xmt> so nobody is root in my case?

It should probably also be made clear that this GRANT ALL .... will create a new user called 'nobody' if it does not already exist.

I know these points are pretty obvious for people who've been working with MySQL for awhile, but it's obviously tripping up some of the newbies out there, and a little rewording wouldn't hurt.

As a side note, GRANT ALL?? That seems a little overly generous?

Additionally, there are approximately 80 kabillion comments on this handbook page:
http://drupal.org/node/260

...which probably need to be gone through to see what is outdated and what should make it into INSTALL.txt.

Comments

morbus iff’s picture

morbus iff
they/them
commented

Instruct the user that he needs to read the full INSTALL.txt, not just the indented portions. From the two paragraphs preceding the line he tried to run:

These instructions are for MySQL. If you are using another database, check the database documentation. In the following examples, 'dba_user' is an example MySQL user which has the CREATE and GRANT privileges. Use the appropriate user name for your system. First, you must create a new database for your Drupal site (here, 'drupal' is the name of the new database):

As for his second problem, again, tell him the same response:

where 'drupal' is the name of your database, 'nobody@localhost' is the username of your webserver MySQL account, 'password' is the password required to log in as the MySQL user

Clarifying the INSTALL.txt won't do diddly squat if people don't actually read it.

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Can't argue there, Morbus...

And actually, it turns out that his confusion was caused by and large because of outdated post-install docs for the gentoo emerge version of Drupal. I'll figure out where to file a bug report with them.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

Please ask them to remove it fromt heir automated install system. There have been at least 10 posts in the forums and an additonal dozen or so #drupal-support questions becuase however they have it packaged is wrong.